Disclaimers: I do not own Young Justice, and although I have a Bachelor's of Science in Microbiology and am currently doing research, I am in no way an expert on genetics…so therefore, please don't hold me accountable for any ambiguity you find.
A/N: A Lingering Feeling's universe will continue as if "Usual Suspects" never happened.
Also, just a reminder I started this story without knowing Artemis's actual eye color, so I made the assumption they were grey, but with a blue tint to them. Genetically, this phenomenon would be called… well, let's just have Wally explain it :)
A Lingering Feeling
X. Rationality
The best scientist is open to experience, and begins with romance—the idea that anything is possible.
- Ray Bradbury
Mount Justice
December 10, 13:00 EDT
Have a holly jolly Christmas; it's the best time of the year!
Artemis tightly shut her eyes and leaned back into her chair until her head dangled precariously over the edge.
"Make it sto-o-o-p," she groaned.
It was going to be M'gann's first Christmas, and she had decorated the entire Cave into the love-child of The Nutcracker ballet and Santa Claus's winter wonderland, and routed the special holiday into every sensory pathway in existence. There was tinsel, ribbon, paper snowflakes, fake snow, and glittering lights for one's optic nerves; smells of gingerbread cookies and pine needles for the olfactory bulbs; peppermint brownies and hot chocolate for tingling taste buds; fuzzy faux-fur throws over the couches for fingers and toes; and the never-ending-always-looping-on-replay holiday music swirling and dancing through the hallways.
Artemis didn't want to seem like a Scrooge, but ten days straight of constantly hearing about jingle bells and magical snowmen was already enough to make her feel like she was trapped in an overly-cheery department store.
Oh ho the mistletoe hung where you can see; somebody waits for you; kiss her once for me!
She gathered her laptop and notebook and stood up. There had to be an area in the Cave impenetrable to sound, and where she could finish this dreaded history essay in peace—and not the heavenly type those incessant carolers wished you to sleep in.
Upon exiting her room, she was immediately greeted with a wall of rustling pine needles.
"Whoa!" she exclaimed, backing away from the dark-green porcupine.
"Oh, sorry Artemis!" floated M'gann's chirpy voice from beyond the sea of emerald. The tree floated away to reveal the rosy-cheeked Martian and Zatanna, trailed by a visibly befuddled Superboy.
"Um, so what's the tree for again," he mumbled, following the two girls and said floating-tree down the hall.
"Well, Conner," M'gann began with soothing patience, "it's because evergreens—just like this one-symbolized—"
But with the help of her ninja-skills and the jingling Christmas music overhead, Artemis had already disappeared beyond ear-shot before she could hear another word of M'gann's Christmas 101.
There was one place she had in mind—one sanctuary that could possibly possess even the slightest sound-proof quality—the library lying beyond the currently opening doors before her.
But as soon as she saw him, echoes of a conversation she had tried so hard to shut away sliced through her mind.
Are you that freaked out about Arrow joining the team you had to prove yourself by bringing down the bad guys solo? Please tell me I'm wrong… Well, nice going. What you proved is that you're insecure, and selfish…
Artemis had wanted to tell him everything right there and then because the anger and betrayal in his eyes and voice had cut through her with more pain than a physical knife. Wally had been nothing but honest with her for the past few months, and she had slowly allowed herself to open her past emotional cicatrices one by one. She was planning on spilling every last secret to him—who her father and sister are, who her mother was—but not then; not in front of the accompanying Team. Only Wally had earned her fragile trust.
And in return she had shattered his confidence in her; heard its pieces resonate at her feet with Cheshire's sai.
So as the door slid open to reveal the rows of shelves and tables, she was about to spin around and return to wallowing in self-pity and oh by golly's.
But just then, Wally looked up from his fan of papers and books and leaned back into his chair with a grin.
"I was wondering when the music would drive you nuts," he teased in his own way of greeting her.
Truthfully, he was glad to see Artemis. His past resentment towards her deceit during their last mission had long dissipated, and had been replaced by a gnawing sense of…emptiness. He would be lying to himself if he said he didn't miss talking to her.
"It's almost as worse as you," Artemis replied in the same tone. She paused, and then walked down the stairs to Wally's table after deciding upon the lesser of the two evils. The door slid shut behind her, and finally—delightfully—she was able to savor the silence.
However, right as she sat down across from him, Wally unleashed an extremely classy and dignified burp. Artemis grimaced, but her optimistic angel whispered to her that at least his belch didn't bubble into a holiday tune.
Wally shook the soda can in his hand, and upon discovering the unfortunate absence of any sloshing noises, leaned back in his chair again and launched it smoothly into a nearby waste-basket.
"And the crowd goes wild!" he dramatically cheered for himself. He sent a silly grin to Artemis, who merely rolled her eyes as she opened her laptop.
"And the crowd goes wild searching for tomatoes to throw at you!" she quipped in return.
Wally's grin quickly turned upside down.
"But they miss and hit the blonde girl instead!" he swiftly riposted.
"Who launches them at Wally!"
Wally laughed, and raised his arms to mime a back-handed swing with an invisible tennis racket. Artemis dodged the imaginary onslaught of tomatoes, and looked over her shoulder with exaggerated terror.
"Oh no! You seem to have plastered Batman with tomato juice!" She widened her eyes and then nodded advisedly at him. "You should probably run away," she whispered coolly.
Wally flicked his wrist and "threw" away the racket, and while maintaining a comically innocent expression, pointed a swift finger at Artemis. The archer, however, had already channeled her focus to rereading the beginning of her essay, and her scowl was directed at the haphazard hash of supposedly coherent words. Sometimes she wished there was a law that allowed secret vigilantes the opportunity to opt out of the public—and scholarship-funded-private—school system, because sometimes it was difficult to concentrate on past world wars when one was busy preventing current apocalypses.
"What are you working on?" Artemis asked without pausing in her typing.
"Genetics," answered the busily writing speedster.
"Punnett Squares?"
"Actually, yes."
"Big b; little b," Artemis sighed in sing-song boring tone.
"Incomplete dominance, co-dominance, pedigree charts, epistasis…" Wally flipped through his notes and read off each topic. "Way more interesting than your regular pea-plants."
Artemis couldn't help but raise an eyebrow and look up from her screen.
"They're teaching you that in your sophomore year?" There was a tinge of awe in her voice—something Wally caught with a broadening of his chest.
"College course," he replied, unable to keep the proud from infiltrating his voice and expression.
Artemis paused, and then a question blurted from her mouth before her brain had the opportunity to filter it.
"So, how is it that I have blonde hair?"
The question caught Wally off-guard, and he remained silent for a few seconds before he could reply. But science was his forté; his territory, and the words flowed naturally like water pouring from a cup.
"Well, it's because both your parents are carriers of the recessive allele for blonde hair."
Artemis tilted her head slightly down to focus her gaze on him.
"But my mom's…full Asian," she stated, doubt mingling between the words.
"Right," Wally responded with confidence. "And I'm assuming your father isn't though? But even if he was," he continued without waiting for her answer, "recessive genotypes are still able to be passed down generations before expressing. For example, there are some full Asians with blonde hair in Mongolia. All you need is for two silent carriers to have a child with statistics on their side. And you probably also wonder about your eye color?"
Artemis slowly opened her mouth, but Wally began once more without waiting for a response. With a spark of humor, she could tell he was definitely in the science zone.
"Well," he began fervently, "eye color is actually much more complicated than hair color as more than one gene can influence it—up to sixteen, according to current data. Sometimes the genes coding for eye color and hair color are in loci that are so close on their respective alleles they get passed on together during the recombination step of meiosis. For example," he paused and gestured to himself, "red hair and gorgeous green eyes like those of yours truly. Same thing for blonde hair and blue eyes. But of course these recessive alleles can be repressed by dominant phenotypes, like brown hair and eyes. But your eye color…" his voice trailed off as he looked into Artemis's eyes—those mesmerizing orbs encompassing the line between calm sky and rough seas. She blinked, and the sudden break snapped Wally back.
He cleared his throat and continued, "Your eye color is probably due to central heterochromia, which describes irises that have two or more colors from differences in melanin distribution. So therefore, the alleles coding for blue is probably your original genotype, and the grey is a result of changes in melanin concentration throughout your iris."
"Hold on," Artemis interjected and leaned forward with a raised finger. "I always thought grey eyes are the result of higher deposits of collagen in the stroma, which causes Mie scattering rather than Rayleigh scattering of light, kind of like—"
"—how the sky appears blue during clear days, and grey during rainy days," Wally finished.
Artemis tilted her head slightly to the side and the edges of her lips curled upwards. Wally was the first person she had met who could finish her more scientifically-inclined sentences like that—the first person she didn't have to worry about intimidating because of her intelligence.
"Both, I think," Wally continued with a nod. "Along with collagen, the location of melanin—whether it's in the front or back layer of the iris—can determine the shade of grey, or blue."
"Right, but no one really understands the genetic factors behind those," Artemis tagged on. "It's not a simple matter of big b, little b."
This time, Wally grinned.
"But it's still fun to play with."
Artemis raised an eyebrow, and in response, Wally reached across the table for her notebook and flipped to a fresh page.
"Say you and Roy were going to have a kid—"
The archer visibly blanched and shot Wally a coal-burning glare.
"What?" She reached over to swat the pen out of his hand but he leaned away with a laugh.
"Oh come on, just for shits and giggles and science!"
Artemis grumbled irritably but looked down at the table Wally was merrily drawing on her notebook. It was a Punnett Square, and beside it he had written:
Artemis: bbGg
Roy: rrgg
"So can I punch you in the face for shits and giggles and science?" she snarled.
Wally deliberately ignored her and began explaining what alleles each letter represented, "So the little b's represent your blonde hair—a homozygous recessive trait. Same with the little r's, which is Roy's red hair. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume the genotype for your eye color is heterozygous, with grey being dominant over blue, and—"
"Roy has blue eyes?" Artemis interrupted, clearly surprised.
Now it was Wally's turn to nearly choke. He stared off to the side and mentally stumbled over a few words, before deciding honest admittance was the way to go, and hopefully Batman wouldn't make a meal out of his big mouth.
"Like beautiful sapphires," he crooned.
Artemis just rolled her eyes.
"Oh, what a hunk."
"So, your kids will be obviously getting their looks from him."
"Desire to punch you is still strong!" Artemis growled through gritted teeth.
Wally ignored her and finished the Punnett Square, and spun the notebook on the table so she could read the results.
"So they're all going to have blonde hair, with half of them with grey eyes and the other half with blue eyes," she interpreted in a dull voice. She looked back at Wally and raised an eyebrow. "And what am I supposed to do with this anyhow? Prance around Roy and fangirl over all the beautiful babies he could beget with me?"
Wally leaned back and laughed.
"I'd pay good money to see that…"
Artemis picked up the notebook and took a swing at him with it, which he expertly ducked away from. She held onto the notebook however, and busied herself with carving out a Punnett Square of her own. Her star-crossed lab rats?
"Dude," Wally choked, "me and Robs?"
"Oh come on, just for shits and giggles and science!" Artemis echoed in her best imitation of his voice.
"You don't even know Rob's eye color," Wally huffed.
"They're blue," Artemis answered nonchalantly without glancing from the paper. "Like, deep sea blue."
There was a stretch of silence, and she slowly raised her eyes to take in the sight of a flabbergasted speedster staring wordlessly at her.
"How did—" he began cautiously.
"It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together," Artemis explained, shrugging and returning to the Punnett Square. "We do, after all, hang out together five days out of the week." She looked up and gave a satisfied tilt of her head. "He knows though, and we laughed about it."
She whirled the notebook around and Wally peered at the outcomes.
"Black hair with blue-green eyes?" he acknowledged smugly. "We'd definitely give your kids with Roy a run for their money at the beauty pageant."
Artemis emitted a hybrid between an exasperated groan and an even more exasperated sigh. Wally took the notebook from her again, and drew another square, this time for M'gann and Conner. She looked on intriguingly, and for the next few minutes, they managed to predict the phenotypes of all the different pairs in the Team. Artemis finally yanked the notebook from the apparent reincarnation of Bill Nye the Science Guy and proclaimed she was going to have to burn the pages or the Team members would surely throw them into an insane asylum.
The sounds of keyboard tapping and shuffling papers soon settled comfortably around them with the scent of thousands of bound pages in mahogany shelves. After an hour, Artemis stood up and announced her need to find a certain book because she was aggravated with "those irritating fake sources" on the internet. Wally nodded without looking up, and heard her footsteps disappear into the forest of bookshelves.
Wally was truly thankful he was drawing his lab report figures in pencil first, because the sudden scream from Artemis caused a very thick line of lead to traverse the length of the paper as he practically flew off his chair.
"Artemis!" he called out, racing from shelf to shelf, his adrenaline freefalling in sickening plunges as he imagined every possible scenario with every possible villain and—
He nearly crashed into a bookcase when he saw her at the end of an aisle, standing on a stool and flattening her back against a shelf as her wide eyes locked onto something across from her. Wally ran over, ready to fight and defend, when his gaze fell onto Artemis's supposed attacker—
-and he burst out laughing.
Artemis looked ready to chuck the extremely heavy book in her hand at him.
"What's so funny?" she demanded, practically shrieking.
Wally leaned against the bookshelf and only answered after he managed to maintain regular control of his breathing.
"You screamed bloody murder…because of that?" he continued to chuckle, and pointed a finger at what was apparently the top-tier-bane of Artemis's existence: a lone Wolf spider perched across the spine of a few dusty novels.
If looks could ignite, the entire library—Wally and said spider included—would have been incinerated in a nanosecond as a result of the spark in Artemis's glare.
"Don't just stand there!" she yelled at him, her voice raised an octave. "Do something!"
Wally bit down on his lip to stifle his laughter and reached forward to cup the spider in his hands. Artemis let out an uncharacteristic squeak as he did so, and he peered mirthfully at her expression—half-awed, half-terrified, but 100 percent endearing in how vulnerable she looked.
Yes—endearing, Wally emphasized in his thoughts as he walked through the Cave with the spider docilely motionless in his hand. With all his scientific reasoning, he could not explain the rationality behind this word-choice, but he felt there was something—dare he say it—adorable in seeing Artemis lose her marbles over a harmless Wolf spider, with her scared eyes imploring him to act like a knight in shining armor.
And Wally couldn't help but feel like one, but understanding Artemis's nature, he knew this was going to be a very rare occurrence—which made it all the more noteworthy.
The afternoon was quiet in its blanket of crispy white. The crunch of Wally's shoes in the snow was the only sound vibrating through the cold air. He set the spider down inside a hollow log, and momentarily felt quite sorry for it. In a matter of a few minutes, it had been relocated from the warm insides of a holiday-spirit-filled cave to the reality of the East Coast winter. However, the spider didn't seem to mind as it leisurely waltzed into its new home, oblivious to the epiphany it had just instilled in its capturer and releaser.
Being a human toaster was for exaggeration purposes only, and Wally wasted no time in speeding back into the cozy tummy of the mountain. When he returned to the library, he found their study table was still empty. He silently padded along the aisles of shelves until he spotted Artemis reaching for a book on her tip-toes, her back turned to him and practically inviting the speedster to be replaced with the jokester.
The corner of Wally's lips lifted into a lopsided and roguish grin. He zoomed forward, wrapped his arms around Artemis's shoulders from behind, and yelled in her ear, "Spider!"
The book tumbled out of Artemis's hands, and with lightning speed comparable to his and moving purely on instinct, she jabbed her elbow into his abdomen.
"Oh," he groaned, and slid to his knees while clutching his stomach, "…hurts so good."
Artemis inhaled sharply upon the realization of her action, and twisted around.
"Wally!" she yelled, her voice still flooded with adrenaline. However, the sight of his teeth biting into his lips as he grimaced softened her quills, and she lowered to the ground next to him. "Ugh," she groaned, "I'm so sorry—"
"I'm gonna throw up on you," Wally mumbled, and mimicked a heaving motion.
Artemis sharply drew back her hand, which had been floating worrying over his shoulder.
"—okay I take that back. You deserved it!"
"Minus-one for you," Wally continued to grumble.
Artemis rolled her eyes.
"But really," she began, her tone suddenly changing, "…are you okay?"
Wally's eyes met hers. It was such a simple gesture—an expression she probably didn't even think about beside a few unconscious neural impulses—but for some reason it struck something in him, and a thought expanded like a drop of ink hitting the water surface.
Artemis was showing she cared.
It definitely wasn't the first time—she seemed hesitantly concerned about him after Kent Nelson's death—but this time, she was making amends for her own actions. And one look at her furrowed brow and searching eyes was enough for him to feel like his heart had just been reduced to a gelatinous blob. He finally stood up and stretched his arms behind him.
"I'm fine. It's going to take more than one lousy jab from you to knock me down."
Artemis simply snorted, and also raised herself from her kneeling position.
"I'll remember to hit you harder next time then."
"You wouldn't dare."
Artemis simply set her lips in a straight line and tilted her head challengingly.
"Because," Wally began suavely, "then who will rescue you from spiders?"
The archer opened and closed her mouth, before narrowing her eyes.
"Not a word to the others," she warned.
"Why?" Wally's tone was surprisingly absent of its usual lightness and jest. "What's wrong with possessing the most common phobia that ten-percent of all women have?" he continued.
Artemis growled something inaudible and turned back to the shelf, eyes glaring at the titles on each book's spine, and trying not to recognize the irony in such an action.
"Not practical for a superhero to have such an irrational fear," she threw into the air like a dart.
"Arachnophobia? Of course it's rational!" argued Wally. "Stems from humans' basic instinctual aversion of creepy crawlies that could potentially poison and kills us."
"But being a superhero, I should be able to overcome something like that. I mean, what if we're suddenly attacked by an army of spiders—" She paused and she gave a barely noticeable twitch of her eyes, "—and I can't do anything because I'm being a stupid useless sissy with my ridiculous phobia of—"
"I'm afraid of owls."
Artemis frowned, slightly confused at whether she had just heard correctly, or the constant holiday music had completely addled her eardrums. She turned and stared at him.
"What?"
"I'm terrified of owls," Wally repeated, somewhat louder.
Artemis scanned his face for hints of trickery, but she saw only steady green eyes and forward honesty staring back at her.
"Really?"
"Um…yeah." Wally averted his gaze to the rows of dull-colored books above Artemis's head, and continued, "When I was a kid, I once woke up in the middle of the night and there was this huge owl just staring at me through my window. Been terrified of them ever since."
He inhaled deeply, desperately trying to wash away the image, and looked back at Artemis.
"How's that for a completely irrational fear."
The archer remained silent for a few moments, wordlessly digesting the exposed secret the boy in front of her had just revealed—the boy who took pride in his sense of pride, and was always confident in his outwards confidence. But in that random moment in the library of Mount Justice, Artemis finally saw the layers of pomp and circumstance peel away to reveal a person not too different from herself. She saw that behind surreal arrogance was a very real human being…
…and someone who had just revealed the sweetest thing a friend could offer: he trusted her.
He trusted her, and he forgave her for what had happened after their last mission because he understood the meaning of insecurity.
Wally waited for her answer, and when she didn't reply for several seconds, he bit his lower lip and was about to look away when Artemis finally moved. She crossed her arms, leaned against the bookshelf, and smiled.
"Owls, huh?" Her tone was friendly; void of accusations and annoyance, and then her smile morphed into an impish grin.
Wally sighed and shook his head.
"The things I do for you," he groaned, but even so, a smile splashed across his own face as he followed her out of the shelves.
"So," he began again after they sat back down at their table, "do I get another point for saving your spineless butt from Mister Fuzzy Arachnid?"
Artemis glared at him. It was most unfortunate he had stumbled across this sole weakness of hers, but no matter; she had equal ammunition to return.
"I'll have it delivered to you via Owl Mail," she riposted with ease.
"The itsy bitsy spider crawled into Arty's bed…"
Artemis winced at Wally's purposely nasally sing-song voice. Apparently he could be a terrible singer if he tried.
"Batman became Batman because his greatest fear is a bat," she volleyed back. "You should become Owlman."
"Only if you'll be my trusty sidekick, Spiderwoman!" Wally returned with a million-kilowatt smile.
"Of course!" Artemis replied with the most dramatic glee she could manage. "We'll have such a hoot-ing good time together!"
"When I saw your legs, I eight them up!"
Wally's outrageous pun was the breaking point, and they both burst out laughing and a truce was formed.
There was a comfort in studying together and surrounding oneself with the floating brainwaves from one's companion. If "studying" was an amalgamation of the words "student" and "dying", then misery definitely loved company—even if said company comprised of a snarky archer and a dorky speedster.
The remainder of the afternoon passed without any further interruptions of crossbreeding teammates or bookworms turning into book-spiders. Although, Artemis did imitate the low hooting of an owl during a particularly quiet stretch of writer's block, to which Wally responded with narrowed eyes and wiggly fingers meant to imitate the lanky legs of a spider.
Later that evening—and after her paper had been completed and then meticulously peer-edited by an insistent Wally—Artemis returned to her bedroom and exhaustingly threw her notebook and laptop onto her bed, before doing the same with herself. She ran her hands down her face and flipped to her stomach, and was greeted with a page of Punnett Squares.
She humorously snorted and was about to close the notebook when a thought struck her. She and Wally had jokingly paired every member of the Team except the most obvious. She reached over to her nightstand and grabbed a pencil. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it was getting the better of her. She drew a matrix, and slowly filled in the genotypes of herself and Wally.
When she finished, she blinked at the results, and her mind was suddenly filled with an image of a little girl with flowing golden hair and grey-blue eyes chasing a toddler boy looking very much like a miniature Wally.
She opened her eyes and smiled, but then quickly shut the notebook when she realized how irrational her sense of mirth was.
As if she'd ever end up with that boy…
A/N: Again to reiterate, when I began this story, Artemis's eye color wasn't a solid fact, so I made them blue-grey. I do know now her canonical color is grey, but it was too late to change the story.
Next chapter: Christmas! Will there be mistletoe? You bet ;)
Thanks for reading and taking the time to write a review! I love you all!